Mail Art Futility...and Tacos

Go ahead and send them mail, they make great food.

 

There’s a consistent feeling of futility in mail art.

Often mail artists create projects that no one is interested in. That includes other mail artists. The more excited I am about a project, the less interest I receive. Proud of something you’ve made, want to share it with the world, collective shrugs all around. Mail artists send out four or five times the amount of mail than what we receive. (At least the super active ones). What’s sent back to you consists mostly of pictures cut out from ten year old magazines. Although mail artists relish the correspondents that imbue their work with personality and creativity, these are few and far between. I still send to the magazine cutters with regularity, though, it’s what I was taught to do.

While I never feel like I’m going to quit making things, I often have the feeling of quitting mail art. Not sure what that means, not sure who I turn in my resignation letter to, but I have that feeling at least once a year. I do nothing about it. Since 2009 I’ve never stopped creating and then sending more and more stuff. Each year I mail at least 300 things to mail artists, not including random mailings to weird addresses or to friends and family. In a given year I send at least 500-600 individual pieces that cost me hundreds of dollars, most of which are just pissed into the wind. Spending hundreds on stamps is still a lot more respectable than engaging in some midlife crisis activity. Golf...for example.

It’s the mail artist’s paradox. When you send things out you cannot expect much of a response. You cannot expect anyone to engage with the thing in any public way. If someone finds joy or excitement in your creation, you rarely know about it. This is fine 90% of the time for me. I know the game. I know how things work. I know what to expect but that 10% will always creep back in.

And then you walk into a Mexican restaurant in Mocksville North Carolina and that feeling of mail art futility is completely erased.

Let me back up. I teach at a community college. We have a main campus in Lexington North Carolina, where I spend most of my time, and then a campus at a smaller town called Mocksville North Carolina. The latter is most famous for being the final resting place for Daniel Boone’s parents, Squire and Sarah, and also the birthplace of my paternal grandfather, James. It’s a town of 6,000 people. In Mocksville, I like going to a couple thrift stores and this one Mexican restaurant. No idea how I found it, but I did and started going every time I was teaching in town. It was a surprise gem. During one semester, I went through most of their menu, thinking their verdes enchiladas were the best thing on the menu. I told anyone about the place that I could. I made my wife go. I made friends make a special trip. It was that good. One day, while sitting at in my office, I made a quick broadside. I printed off a ton of these and then mailed them over the course of a few months.

When I walked in the Taco Shop this week, they had taped one of the broadsides I made to the wall directly behind the cash register. Some delightful mail artist, a solid human, sent them that broadside through the mail. It could have come from anywhere. It might have been mailed from Kansas or Japan, I don’t know and I never will.

At first I didn’t notice that it was there, I was too focused on the electronic menu to the right. When I saw it I smiled. I tried to take a picture of it on the wall but I didn’t want to get caught. Getting caught would have taken away some of the fun. I can only imagine what they thought about it when they received it. The mail artist might not have put it any context to their mail. If it showed up without a note, without a reason for it being sent, the people at the shop might have shook their head in confusion. All of those questions, all of those thoughts immediately evaporated the futility I felt that exact moment in making and then sending piece after piece.

Albertsthal Book of Broadsides \ Punk Flyers

Most of what I end up creating is a type of a list. A list of words or either a collection of pieces of paper stuck together. Clearly, I’m not good with transitions. I can’t really keep together a longer narrative so I try and stay away from that. My stories are short and jump from day to day, from event to event. Collages might have a face over there, but they’re not directly connected to the rest of the piece. Not really a criticism of my own work, just a statement of fact. While I write and make collages in some form almost every day, I often see them as separate things. I might write about collage, but I rarely have a lot of writing in a collage…a word or two, but not a story. Once again, no long cohesive narrative. 

A fun cover.

 

I didn’t connect the writing and the collage until recently. Like most things, it just happened, no real forethought. It came together in a book of 32 broadsides (I use this or punk flyers interchangeably, who cares?) that mix words and collage. The words are some play on a central idea, an asinine premise, or a smarmy comment. I embellish on that idea based on a found image that somewhat corresponds to the words. Put them together and someone will try and make a connection. The images are ones that I have constantly looked for in tossed out books, magazines, and random pieces of nothing. They’re always in black and white, or at least made into black and white. Monochrome! Most are line drawings. Many of the images are slightly surreal. For years I have looked for these images, scanned them, and then saved them on my computer. I have thousands of such images.

What further connected the writing and the collage, was a font called “albertsthal typewriter.” It looks nice, slightly clean, but not too clean. I guess I found it during one my dafont.com “shopping” sprees. I like to go there every few months and download a bunch of new fonts to play with. I made one broadside mixing writing, collage, a found image, and this particular font together. I made another, and another. Pretty soon, it looked like I had a narrative going, albeit a crazy and unhinged stream of conscious one, but a narrative nonetheless. I did this over and over again, making a couple a day over the course of a few weeks. When I stopped, I looked back at all of the images I saw a connection between all of them. At least it’s a snapshot of the random things I was thinking during this particular time. There was personal stuff in there, jokes, political things, surreal nonsense, and just stupidity. Maybe it’s my 2025 autobiography?

I was doing all of this right at the same time I was finishing up my Because No One Asked for It book. Since that was mostly clerical work, trying to get people to pay for things and what not, it wasn’t creatively taxing. The timing was strange, but they both benefitted one another. It looked like I was being very creative. During my monthly online mail-art meeting, when I mentioned the albertsthal book, someone actually said in the background, “Another book?” The money left over from the longer book, was used to print up nice copies of the albertsthal one. All I had to pay for was shipping. The work for one paid off in the other. 

 

While I enjoyed making the thing and I think it’s something that’s new for me, I wasn’t super happy about it when it showed up. It didn’t look like I wanted it to. My technical abilities are poor and my interest moves quickly, so it’s not a big deal. I made up 25 envelopes and mailed them off all at one time. I didn’t make an announcement for the new book, and I don’t expect any money to come of it. I’ve posted a few images from the thing, my favorite images. All 32 are collected in a book while some of my favorites will be printed into broadsides and mailed with my usual stuff. I also have tried to cut a few corners, by making some half-sized zines from them. These are quick and easy to print. I’ll send them out as my regular mail-art to whoever I need to send to next. If anyone is interested in a zine copy (the professionally printed ones are gone) I’ll send you one. 

Five images that appear in the book.

 

My copies will be printed from a PDF file. Whenever you open a PDF file, you have an option to use AI. You can ask the robot questions. Although I think AI can end up being the downfall of our society, causing the robots to rise up and destroy humans, it’s also neat. Why not ask the robot what the file is about? The answer I got was frightening accurate, insightful even.

Here’s what he robot said.

This document is a chaotic, satirical, and absurd collection of fragmented thoughts, humorous commentary, and nonsensical advice. ​ It touches on various topics, including coping mechanisms for daily frustrations, bizarre product ideas, critiques of humanity, and random musings about life, music, and aging. Key themes include:

1. Coping with Annoyances: Suggestions like covering your nose to avoid bad smells, scratching your eyes instead of poking them, and wearing a mask to block human interactions. ​
2. Fashion and Consumerism: Random mentions of clothing preferences, deals, and critiques of societal norms. ​
3. Satirical Advice: Tips for leaving work early, looking busy, avoiding coworkers, and using children as excuses. ​
4. Music and Morality: A humorous critique of rock and roll, dancing, and joy, linking them to moral decline and absurd warnings about "genital playing." ​
5. Aging and Old Man Smell: Satirical advice on preventing "old man stink" through wardrobe changes and physical trauma.
6. Random Observations: Commentary on melons, soup season, shame in America, and absurd musings about life and death.
7. Mockery of Religion and Politics: Mentions of "Republican Jesus," critiques of societal norms, and exaggerated moral warnings.
8. Absurd Humor: The document is filled with nonsensical phrases, surreal imagery, and over-the-top satire. ​

Overall, the document is a stream-of-consciousness-style parody of modern life, blending humor, absurdity, and social critique. It lacks coherence but offers a glimpse into a bizarre and exaggerated worldview. ​

 

Because No One Asked For It Is Dead

This is the cover.

 

Because No One Asked For It is finished. I mailed off the last round of copies earlier this week. It’s nice to be done. I’m over it, next thing.

Of all the projects I’ve done recently, this one was the most involved. I had nothing to write for this project since it was a collection of previously written stuff. I went through all of my files and found 60 or 70 articles I thought represented what I most often write. From there I whittled them down, and then whittled them down a little more, and more still. I wanted it to be oppressively massive, but I didn’t want it to be too much money for people to buy.

Since each printed copy was almost twelve dollars to print and another six to mail, I was worried about losing too much money. In the end, printing and mailing cost over $650.00. Because of this worry about losing money, I was very diligent in collecting what I could. This meant that I had to post over and over again, and send multiple follow up messages to more than a handful of people. In some cases, folks just ignored me when I reminded them they said they wanted the book. (This annoys me beyond belief, just say you don’t want it!) For others it was the hounding that I found so taxing. Asking people over and over for money is no fun…no fun. When the overhead is much less, I’ll print a bunch and go on peoples’ word. If they don’t pay, I don’t care. Not in this case. I wanted to print as many as I could without losing too much money. In the end I didn’t lose money, but the project drug on for over a month because of that. 

I used these flyers to drum up some guilt purchases.

 

Intrusive thought. When I was putting this thing together, I thought about the difference between me doing the thing and it getting published, like actually published. First off, no one would have published this thing, there’s no reason. What is the book even about? Why would anyone care? I did it because I wanted to see it exist, which could seem silly. If the thing had been “officially” done, I figure it would have been easy to move more of them. I think people would have been impressed, but without that corporate stamp of approval, I’m just another diluted self-publishing guy. At least I didn’t write one of those sad end of life memoirs…no, I’ll start on that in my 50’s.

This project was something I was planning on doing for about a year. It got put to the side when I worked on my dad’s book. The idea was to have a nice volume of stuff.  A collection of things under one cover I selected as many wide ranging topics as I could and brought them together. There’s no way that any one person has read everything in the book, it just isn’t possible.

I was thankful that Eddie Garcia and John Held Jr. were so kind to write things for it. Gerald Bosch supplied a tone appropriate blurb. Although I was excited they leant their words, I wanted them to know that only a few copies would exist and I doubt most of those people would ever read them.

I ended up printing 41 copies. Most copies I dropped off to friends and family. Since I was leaning on them, I made sure to give them a lot of stuff they didn’t want. I added in a bunch of broadsides and even some framed collages. I especially liked leaving one copy at the end of someone’s dirt road because I was worried a colorful character might appear from the brambles and shoot me if I went down it. When I relayed this information, the recipient never responded. I guess they received what I left.

I had two printings. The first was 30 copies and the second round was 10 copies. When everything was said and done, I had even made a little money off the project. That money is already spent. A few weeks ago I finished a book of thematically linked broadsides I’m going to print. Those will be sent to the folks that bought the bigger, more expensive book. All I want to do is for some of the more expensive projects to break even, or at best pay for the others. In this case it worked out. The book was a success and I made another thing with the meager profits. 

Back cover.